We rely heavily on the Master/Dependent test, as we run multiple tests against each monitored system. The master test for each system is a PING test. If the PING fails, the other (varies - SNMP, HTTP) tests are to stop running. We do not have "Synchronize counters" selected on any test. All tests are set to send email alerts.

These systems are powered on and off frequently. The master PING test is in place solely to stop the other tests when the system is off. It is these other tests that are critical, and the historical up/down data is heavily relied upon. The issue is, anytime the monitored system is powered off we get alerts on all the tests for that system, and failure entries are written to the logs for all the tests on that system - including the dependent tests. Shouldn't HostMonitor run the master (PING) test first, and if that fails then stop iterations of the other tests? We are getting a lot of "false alarm" emails, and our uptime data is being skewed. All tests have the same (1 min) regular test frequency.

(note that after all the tests fail, master and dependent on interation 0, the dependent tests are then stopped until the master passes - but the intiial failure is skewing the test data)

Decrease value of "Consider status of the master test obsolete after N seconds" parameter (located on Behavior page in the Options dialog). By default value of the parameter is 60 sec, I think in your case better use 2-3 sec.